Baby Steps To Planet Saving, Step 1: The Charcoal Toothbrush

In this the first edition of Baby Steps To Planet Saving, I would like to introduce you to The Charcoal Toothbrush. The Charcoal Toothbrush is an awesome Australian company and product (peak efficiency at naming things) that is designed to reduce a little of the plastic with which we are polluting our beautiful oceans.

I first found this company through Taryn Smith’s Instagram account; she also runs the website A Bird With Beliefs, which is also definitely worth a look. Taryn had put up a post about this toothbrush she had bought, and what caught my eye was that fact that the toothbrush was almost completely biodegradable. That is to say, once its shelf life had expired (three months of use, if you didn’t know, which is the same as normal plastic toothbrushes) you could snap off the brush head for and whip it into the recycle bin, and the rest of it you could shove in the garden. To biodegrade. Within approximately six months. So, instead of buying four toothbrushes a year which are inevitable thrown away and usually end up in the ocean killing what wildlife we don’t actively and directly kill ourselves, you could buy a toothbrush that is biodegradable and recyclable. Because most plastics will last for ever and ever and ever and ever amen and a lot of them, despite those handy recycle bins we all have at home, can’t actually BE recycled. Hence the landfills. And the oceans. And other bodies of water which inevitably have human trash thrown in at some point.

Except these toothbrushes won’t. Because they’re made mostly of bamboo which will biodegrade, and the bristles are made of activated charcoal-infused nylon which is recyclable.

And before the inevitable questions, no, using bamboo to manufacture toothbrushes will not starve the pandas, because pandas do not eat the type of bamboo these brushes are made from; Charcoal Toothbrush foresaw that lance and put together a brush FAQ.

Another really awesome thing about Charcoal Toothbrush is that instead of purchasing one or a certain number of toothbrushes (which is possible, of course), you can purchase a year’s subscription, and they’ll automatically send you a new toothbrush every three months. This is pretty brilliant, because you don’t have to worry about replacing your toothbrush with the hygienic regularity you SHOULD, and because you pay for the subscription up front you don’t have to pay for toothbrushes again for a year. You’re helping beat back the environmental devastation we as a species are wreaking upon the planet (still the only one we have), and every charcoal toothbrush purchased helps another marine animal to live.